Utility of a novel turn-off fluorescence probe for the determination of tranilast, an adjunctive drug for patients with severe COVID-19.

Tranilast (TR) could be investigated as a suitable anti-inflammatory and NLRP3 inflammasome inhibitor medication for the treatment of COVID-19 acute patients. Owing to its importance, our study was constructed for the determination of TR using a new, fast, sensitive, and reliable green spectrofluorimetric method. TR was quantified in this study by forming a complex with the acriflavine (AC) reagent. The reaction between TR and AC quenched the fluorescence of AC through the formation of an ion-association complex and the response was measured at 493 nm after excitation at 263 nm. It was observed that the quenching of the fluorescence of AC was linear ( = 0.9998) with the concentration of TR in the range of 1.0-15.0 μg mL. The limit of detection was 0.224 μg mL, and the limit of quantification was 0.679 μg mL. The fluorescence quenching mechanism was carefully studied and was confirmed to be able to analyze TR in its pure form and its prepared pharmaceutical dosage form. To validate the method, the international conference of harmonization (ICH) QR guidelines were followed. The statistical assessment of the proposed and comparison methods revealed no significant differences between them. Moreover, the green criteria of the method were evaluated and confirmed.